Chapter 92: A Quick Breather - Part 1

"Illusinaria!" Getting everyone inside her shop, Linkle ran her hand through the air with a flair of her mana. Deactivating the spell, she reverted everyone's appearance back to normal. Letting her hand fall back down, her eyes squinted as she glanced across everyone's faces. "You should be paying me for casting that idiotically inefficient spell."

Having to maintain their false appearance so the hero's party could sneak into her shop without anyone noticing them, she'd spent an exorbitant amount of her strength and the day had just started.

"Mages..." Shaking her head with a disapproving scoff, she quickly turned around and walked over to her work desk. "Always troubled creatures to deal with, not to mention a priestess who's also a trapper–might as well have been trying to trick a dark general!"

"Are you done complaining?" Mino retorted, scowling.

"As grumpy as ever, do your people not know courtesy? Or house rules for that matter?" Reaching behind her desk, Linkle grabbed something in her hand and floated from behind to the top of the desk. "This is my shop, the least I expect is some respect."

Though she spoke on and on about something or the other, nobody truly listened when they noticed what she had in her hand. The head of a vampire, one that the party themselves had slain. Tied with a rope like pots hanging near doorways, Linkle carried it so casually it could be mistaken for a lantern.

"What are peo–" Finally realizing that nobody else was listening, the witch followed their gaze to her right hand. "Oh, this?"

Lifting it higher, she fiddled it in the air and the lifeless head of the vampire came back to life. Its eyes glowing with a silver light carrying an emerald hue, the head seemed conscious, but its rampant attempts at nibbling at Linkle's clothes proved that the vampire lord wasn't really there.

"Just a helper, nothing more nothing less," letting go of the head, Linkle floated right beside her. It instantly tried to bite her dress, however, she gently nudged it away from her body. "Go and clean up my workshop."

"So you had to deal with a horror, big deal minotauress," still unamused by Mino's tale, Linkle shook her head disappointed.

"What's a horror?" Though she felt angry at the arrogant witch, Mino kept it under control as she wanted to find a way to deal with such a situation better in the future.

"You don't know what a horror is?" Wearing a deep frown tinged with confusion, Linkle stared at Mino for a spell before turning around to check on the others. "You guys don't know either? Are you insane? Never been to the library or something?"

"Yeah sorry, we orphans didn't get a scholarship funded by the royals," Raven spoke up, somewhat annoyed at Linkle's increasingly condescending tone.

"And what we do know is from what little the church allowed us to read," jumping into the conversation, Erika wanted to defend the church, but even she knew they'd always been biased against them. "But we did manage to study more with Darius' help, though even his collection of books had nothing related to these horrors you're talking about."

Scoffing in their faces, the witch jumped off the desk and began making her way into her workshop. The rest of the group tried to get up and follow her, but with a simple show of her hand, she made them sit back down in the chair.

"Just sit down, and let me help you for the umpteenth time," as crude as her words had been, seeing potential in a partnership, Linkle wanted their party to prosper, and thus, getting inside her workshop, she grabbed hold of 'The book of horrors' detailing everything about those monsters, at least everything that people who'd encountered them knew of.

'They'll die even with this won't they?' And though their intentions differed like the poles, the witch and the goddess were both on the same page over the hero party's survival.

Note: Lewd stuff will return soon, just a few chapters of character and world-building XD. Vote for the Next Sexy Monster Encounter in comments in the meantime!